


the wind here sings

by Eddaic



Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: The Original Series
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Denial, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Pining, mature themes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-19
Updated: 2017-09-19
Packaged: 2018-12-31 16:09:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,613
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12136137
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eddaic/pseuds/Eddaic
Summary: Spock is beginning to suspect he and McCoy make a pattern.





	the wind here sings

**Author's Note:**

> Since _Star Trek: TOS_ is episodic, this fic does not follow the “timeline” of the series. Hence, 'Bread and Circuses' takes place before 'Amok Time', and so on. Title from 'judas meeting an angel' by Keaton St. James.
> 
> Yes, I have watched _Fullmetal Alchemist_. Yes, the watch was inspired by that.

  **the wind here sings**

**i.**

“Why is it,” says McCoy, as he shivers and curls up against the damp cave wall, “that when I’m stuck in a godforsaken, barren wasteland, I’m always with you?”

(Spock is good at recognising patterns. It is one of the things that nudged him towards science in his boyhood.)

“Doctor,” Spock says, “we have been stuck on a ‘barren wasteland’ only once before, so this is merely a coincide – ”

“Shaddup, Spock, let a man get some catharsis,” McCoy grouses, and blows his nose into his plaid handkerchief.

Spock generously refrains from telling him exactly what that sounds like. He had a pet sehlat for fourteen years, three months, and one day; he is well acquainted with such noises. “Jim will be trying to find us,” he says. “He would not leave crewmembers, let alone senior officers, to perish. It has only been two point five three hours since we were separated; we will survive for at least seven more if we stay here.” 'Here' being the dank dark cave they had stumbled upon by chance after the blizzard struck.

“Don’t talk of death, Spock. It leaves me cold.”

Spock wonders if that was an attempt at humour. McCoy is still frowning, so he supposes not. Then again, humans behave in strange ways, and McCoy is stranger (more contrary, more confusing) than most. Suppressing a sigh, Spock pulls out his communicator. It had been useless the last time he tried it, but there might be a signal now. His fingers are clumsy when he flips it open, and McCoy’s eyes slit to him.

“Show me your hands.”

“My hands are not your concern.”

“They are if you’re hurt. Don’t be a stubborn bastard, Spock. Or maybe you’d like to lose a couple of fingers.”

Spock cannot tell if that is a medical conclusion or a statement of aggressive concern humans employ at times to ‘tease’. Seeing as McCoy is bent on examining him, he puts down the communicator and dutifully holds out his hands, feeling like a child under the inspection of his mother. What would Amanda say if she knew of this? Spock almost shudders to think of the endless, affectionate teasing.

“Any prickling or numbness?” McCoy is saying, prodding.

“Both. They are not particularly strong.”

McCoy grunts and lets go of Spock’s hands. “Not frostbite yet,” he mutters, “but there’s frostnip, which could get worse. Rub your hands together and put them in your armpits.”

“I have no need to,” Spock says without looking at him. His Vulcan blood has been called thin, but he knows that to be false.

“ _Do it,_ Mister Spock.”

McCoy can be unsettling, which is illogical, because he is no match for Spock—he is barely a match for fit humans.

There is a slight rustling sound and Spock looks up to find McCoy removing his gloves.

“Here.” McCoy shoves them under Spock’s nose.

“No."

“Either use my gloves or stick your hands in your armpits. How is it logical to value your pride over your fingers?”

“It is no matter of pride, Doctor. I am less sensitive to the cold than humans, and can also control my body temperature.”

“That frostnip calls bullshit.”

Spock looks at McCoy’s already reddening hands (chapped. In a few minutes they might bleed), at the determined set of his jaw, and feels…he does not have a word for it. He is somewhat annoyed (as he has been with McCoy since they were introduced two months, six days, and nine hours ago), but there is something intermingling with that. Something like fondness. There are only three people Spock has felt fondness for: his mother, his sister, and Jim.

This slowly widening circle of people disquiets him.

Suddenly stiff, he locks gazes with McCoy, says, “I am Vulcan,” and pushes the gloves away.

McCoy narrows his eyes. “Now, listen here, you overgrown elf,” he says, “you may be a Vulcan, but I’m the ship’s CMO, and I will not have you suffer frostbite on my watch.”

“I will not ‘suffer’ – ”

They are spared the looming argument by the communicator beeping. McCoy lunges for it and flips it open, and Jim's voice comes through, relieved and slightly breathless.

When they are beamed back up, McCoy huffs his way to sickbay and tells Spock to follow. Spock looks after him and mentally lists all the reasons why McCoy is inept and unworthy of respect. Insensitive. Unprofessional. Cruel – no, that is untrue. Emotional. So emotional. It is excessive, obscene. It spills out of McCoy like pus from a broken blister.

(The conversation with his father before he joined Starfleet comes to mind.

_You will not be Vulcan if you join them._

_I am, and always shall be Vulcan._

_You overestimate yourself_.)

***

"Yes, Mister Spock," says Jim with a quirk of his lips, steepling his fingers. "You wanted to see me."

Spock puts his hands behind his back. "It is a somewhat delicate issue, and concerns Doctor McCoy."

Jim frowns at that. Matters involving McCoy are always sensitive for Jim; the two have been (for some reason) close friends for many years. Spock cannot fathom (does not want to) why someone with such charisma, innate leadership qualities, and logical sense like Jim would hold McCoy in high esteem. "Go on," says Jim, looking wary.

"I have observed his behaviour till date, and have reason to request demoting him to lieutenant."

Jim's eyes widen. He looks incredulous, almost offended.

Spock continues despite perceiving disapproval, "The reasons are insubordination and unprofessionalism. Captain, he frequently disobeys orders, cannot maintain a calm composure, and uses insults, even against you. It is only logical to demote him so he may begin to behave in a manner more befitting of a Starfleet officer." He thinks of McCoy's command stripes, gold against periwinkle blue, McCoy's brow furrowed with distress, McCoy's steady hands buried in a body's guts, surgical gloves blotched with blood.

For 12.3 seconds, Jim remains silent, seemingly paralysed in his chair. Spock is starting to grow uneasy under the weight of his gaze, now cooler than it had been at the beginning of this meeting. Slowly, Jim gets up, his jaw tight, nostrils flaring. Spock recognises the signs of anger. Humans, Spock reminds himself, grow angry when faced with logic.

Jim says curtly, "I will consider your proposal, Commander," and then tells him to get out.

He does not speak with Spock for two days. The orders come and go, but there are no games of chess, no casual touches, no pointless conversations. Spock tells himself this does not matter, as it does not interfere with his duties.

McCoy flits onto the bridge, seemingly oblivious to all this, chatting with Lieutenant Uhura, putting his hand on Jim's shoulder. He nods and smiles at Spock and says, "How's it going, Mister Spock?" and without waiting for a reply returns his attention to Jim.

(Spock is beginning to suspect he and McCoy make a pattern.)

**ii.**

He moves without thought.

Jab. Run. Twist. He only realises he has knocked a man out and nerve pinched another into oblivion after the latter has collapsed to the ground, by McCoy's feet. Spock looks at McCoy (panting, splayed, alive), an acute, unfamiliar heat surging through his chest; breathing is difficult. It takes a moment for him to recognise it as fury, mingled with self-disgust.

He has been called violent by his schoolmates. Half-Vulcan, and therefore wayward, inferior, barbaric. He surveys the man crumpled on the floor. The helmet covers his face. Spock does not know his name. His fists are trembling.

There was no reason for him to save McCoy. There was _no_ reason. They could have found another surgeon, superior to McCoy. Human surgeons are common as Vulcan mica. Spock wants to get away from him. _He wants to get away._

(Something like hysteria now.)

In the prison he keeps his back to McCoy, refuses to even glance at him. He fiddles with the iron bars, searching for a fissure, a loose junction, anything. He thinks of Jim, locked away somewhere. Jim could be hurt. His captain could be hurt. It is Spock's duty to ensure Jim's safety. Jim –

"Angry, Mister Spock? Or frustrated perhaps?" McCoy's voice floats lazily from near the wall.

That is all it takes.

On they go, back and forth. (Their pattern.)

(Spock is displeased that he thinks of it as 'their' pattern.)

He tries to right the universe, to slot it back into its logical place. As the words fall from his mouth he believes he should be proud of himself, for sounding so purely Vulcan. He should. He is not. His schoolteachers would be. (Wouldn’t they?) "The loss of our ship's surgeon, whatever I may think of his relative skill, would mean a reduction in the efficiency of the _Enterprise_ – "

Afterwards, when they are beamed up, they do not talk to each other. Spock, instead of being relieved, is, as Jim would say, ‘on edge’. This troubles him. McCoy had been out of line in the cell. (Spock had not; he had been making a logical statement, and if McCoy had been hurt, on his own head be it, for being so utterly human.)

_Why, you wouldn't know what to do with a genuine, warm, decent feeling._

It is only after McCoy perches on his console the next day that Spock's shoulders relax. (Patterns have an unfortunate way of setting the mind at ease.)

**iii.**

Spock does not like to touch people. His sister is an exception, as is Jim. This is unsurprising; sibling affection is natural, logical, and Jim has been like a brother to him.

It takes him an unforgivably long time to realise how comfortable he is touching McCoy. When he does, in the middle of Beta shift, he removes his earpiece and puts it down, dazed. He touches McCoy rather a lot. A tap on his shoulder (graceless), a brush of fingers (indecent). When did this begin? How had he permitted it to _continue_?

Jim calls to him and he takes .57 seconds longer than usual to respond. Spock decides then to keep his thoughts from drifting to McCoy.

**iv.**

Like most of their disagreements, this one starts from something irrelevant. (The placement of Spock’s internal organs.)

Unlike most of their disagreements, Spock finds this one…unpleasant. And not only because of the irritation McCoy elicits in him. Somehow – it is always _somehow_ with McCoy – he winds up unnecessarily commenting on McCoy’s surliness.

"Well, Spock, if you want someone _nice_ , you'll have to employ a new CMO. This is how I function."

"There is no need to explain, Doctor McCoy. I had known you would be difficult to work with."

"And what does that mean?"

Spock scrabbles for appropriate words, finds none, talks anyway. “Your reputation precedes you.” It is graceless, beneath the dignity of a Vulcan to resort to such trivialities. He regrets it immediately. Yet he has spoken, and now he will have to continue.

“Oh?” McCoy folds his arms over his chest. “Do tell, Mister Spock.”

“They say…” Spock does not want this to turn ugly. And it will, if he tells the truth.

McCoy looks at him expectantly.

_They say you killed your father._

Spock had heard it, whispered in almost-empty hallways and rec rooms. McCoy may have the respect of most people on the ship, but there are those who dislike him; he is, Spock thinks, easy to dislike, even as he is easy to admire. “…They say your bedside manner is scarcely better than a Klingon’s.” It is not a lie.

McCoy rolls his eyes and walks off towards the bridge.

***

Spock comes upon the watch by accident.

When he enters sickbay for his post-mission checkup, McCoy is fidgeting with it absently, but leaves it on his desk along with an assortment of other things when Nurse Chapel politely interrupts to call him away. Sickbay is silent save the rhythmic beeping of the biobed monitors. Nosiness is illogical, but Spock tells himself he is merely being curious – it is a rather intriguing gadget. Leaning over the table, he picks up the watch. The case is of silver, with a stylised sun-and-moon design. It is either a lovely antique, or a clever copy. (The aesthetic appeal of Earth’s twentieth-century pocket watches had never gone out of Terran fashion).

Tentatively, ignoring the voice in his head chastising him, he clicks a button and the watch springs open. The air is filled with that peculiar, soothing ticking noise he has heard only a few times. Inside the case is scratched out in haphazard, sharp lines (likely McCoy’s own hand), as if with a compass:

_Don't forget_

_03 11 2256_

Spock snaps it shut and quickly replaces it on the desk. Guilt and shame rise in him and he makes no effort to batter them down; this, he deserves. He has no business touching McCoy's things, let alone an object so obviously personal and valued.

He turns around.

And finds McCoy looking at him. Spock registers, vaguely, that he has never seen eyes quite so blue; beneath the sickly lights they overwhelm the rest of McCoy’s features. It is as if McCoy is a lifelike wooden doll and the doll-maker decided to give him real eyes.

Spock opens his mouth.

“Don’t.” McCoy walks over and takes a seat at his desk, picking up his watch. Spock waits for the inevitable tirade, waits, waits…

McCoy stares at the watch blankly. Keeps staring. The seconds stretch on. (Spock understands, in that moment, both the meaning of ‘unnerving’ and the failures of language as he knows it). When he speaks, his voice is devoid of inflection. “Dad gave it to me. When I graduated med school.”

_They say you killed your father._

McCoy swallows, slips the watch into his trouser pocket. Then he stands up and runs a tricorder over Spock, slipping on impassivity.

**v.**

After Sarpeidon McCoy becomes restive. He stops bickering with Spock and instead casts him furtive glances from beneath his lashes. He trails after him briefly in hallways and then walks away. He does not touch him. Spock begins to grow wary and slightly twitchy; he feels like a hounded animal.

One afternoon McCoy sits at Spock’s table in the mess hall just as Spock is taking the first sip of his pumpkin soup. “I, uh…I got something to talk with you about. It’s been eating at me for a while.”

Spock raises an eyebrow and does not comment on the curious wording.

“I mean,” McCoy begins, pauses, licks his lips in that nervous manner of his. Spock gazes at him, intrigued; McCoy lost for words is a rare, rare thing. “Every time you’ve had some…relationship. It’s never…well, it’s never been particularly nice.”

Spock goes rigid. This is not a subject he wishes to broach.

“I’ll admit I’m kinda…” McCoy clears his throat. “Kinda worried.”

Spock knows this is McCoy’s way of asking if he is all right, if he has any ‘issues’ that trouble him.

He does not appreciate it.

“T’Pring I could understand, to an extent, even if that situation was nasty and I didn't like her, but the others…they both used you, Spock,” McCoy continues, in that tone he usually reserves for ill or injured patients. It is so gentle it is mocking. “Leila, especially.” McCoy is shrewd, choosing the mess hall to speak of such matters. Spock cannot argue without attracting attention.

He folds his napkin carefully under the guise of being preoccupied. “She is not your concern.”

“She drugged you out of your mind and took advantage of you,” McCoy says, incredulous. “How can you not see that? Or were you so giddy from false happiness that you didn’t care after the effects wore off?”

There is a silence. Spock does not want to think about what Leila did. He wants to remember her as warm and loving and generous, as someone who gifted him with a kind of joy he had never felt before. He wants to remember the kisses shared amid the grass and the trees (so far from the scorching, barren sands of Vulcan). McCoy is ruining that memory. Why is he ruining it? Why does he insist on trying to upset Spock? Can he not see how much she meant to him?

At length Spock says coldly, “You will cease to pry into my business.” _Or I shall certainly break your neck_. He had said that, had he not? Yes, during his _pon farr_. And he _had_ almost broken McCoy’s neck. Spock thinks of that fragile, tender human flesh beneath his fingers, the way he had squeezed it, almost, _almost_ …

McCoy does not flinch. “Are you threatening me, Mister Spock?” His voice is calm, but Spock can hear the steel in it.

Spock does not reply, staring at his napkin, at the neat, crisp folds. _Is_ he threatening McCoy? This would not be the first time. It would not be the second time, either. Spock is beginning to see another pattern – one he finds deeply, deeply disturbing. He draws a long breath, makes himself look at McCoy, at those bright, fearless eyes. “I am not,” he murmurs. “I do not wish to.” He does not know why he felt the need to add that.

McCoy’s face softens. After a moment he sighs and stands up. Spock has to stop himself from reaching out and catching that brittle wrist. McCoy says, sounding resigned, “I suppose it’s not really my business, anyway.” He looks at Spock oddly. “Take care, Mister Spock. If you…if you need to talk, you can come to me.”

_I nearly killed you._

McCoy dumps his untouched food into the recycler, and Spock gazes at the curl of his back till he disappears through the doors.

**v.**

"Wish me luck."

(McCoy doesn't.)

***

“Shut up, Spock, we’re rescuing you!”

“Why, thank you, _Captain_ McCoy.”

(As if Spock’s wit were so appallingly dull. McCoy is doing a better job of contaminating him than he thought.)

**vi.**

Spock has his fingers in McCoy’s hair and it is coarse in some places and downy in others. (It is such a lovely shade of brown. Warm, common, comforting. His mother would have called it ‘nice’. An unsophisticated little word. What a nice colour to look at every day.) He would have liked to run his hands through that hair when it was not tacky with blood.

McCoy says You’ve got a good bedside manner Spock and Spock is reeling from toomanythingstoomuchtooquickly to reply.

Something changes between them then, and Spock knows he can no longer rely on the uncomplicated embrace of logic.

**vii.**

Jim describes McCoy's eyes as 'baby blue', and while Spock sees no correlation between human babies and blue, he finds it strangely fitting.

(Christopher Pike's eyes had been blue as well, cool and steely with a good bit of grey in them, but the light in them never flared with such shameless joy or grief or rage. When Spock thinks of McCoy's eyes he pictures a choppy sea – nothing to do with their colour – self-righteous and perilous and darkly beautiful. Pike was an efficient captain because he did not have eyes like that.)

That night, Spock dreams. He knows it is a dream because Vulcans do not dream. (But he is just a half-breed, Spock, I’m tired of your half-breed interference.) McCoy is there and knows how to mind-meld and Spock says You do not, because you are psi-null, full-human pure-blood, and McCoy puts his fingers on Spock's face. The meld does not feel like a meld and loosens Spock's inhibitions and when he turns and kisses McCoy's palm, it tastes of salt water.

**viii.**

Spock recognises desire. It feels stuck to him, like desert sand after a storm.

He takes a sonic shower, full blast, scrubbing himself as if he can scrub the desire right off, and at the end his skin is raw and chafed and he still _wants_ , so he sits on his bed and rocks himself the way his mother used to rock him as a child. It is illogical, and unseemly, but it helps to calm him.

(Spock has learned, during his long and often peculiar tenure as an officer of the _Enterprise_ , that things that are illogical are at times true.

And perhaps this is what his father had disapproved of.

Spock tries to pay it mind.)

**ix.**

Their communicators are jammed.

“Of _course_ they are,” McCoy spits. “Why do I ever beam down? Why do I let Jim convince me to?”

Spock thinks that McCoy would leap into a pit of fire if Jim ordered him to; certainly he would beam down to a Class-M planet for (what was supposed to be) a trade mission. Unfortunately, they had found that, once again, the Klingons had offered the natives a competing product beforehand. Things had escalated, and Jim was called back to the _Enterprise_ , since Scotty's fever, which he had sustained for two days, had rapidly risen. Spock can only guess that they are playing war games with Klingon ships, since both he and McCoy are still on the ground.

_It never rains; it pours_ , Jim says often, and Spock is beginning to understand the phrase.

McCoy grips the medical tricorder at his hip – the only tricorder they have, since Spock's had been stolen amid the chaos - and pivots to look at Spock. “You get out of here. I’m going to save as many of these people as I can.”

After word had gotten out of the Klingons’ dubious motives, there had been an ugly brawl with the Klingon soldiers and the sparse natives of this planet. Several of both parties are left barely alive or dead on the ground. Of the ones heavily injured is a small girl with twin plaits and dark eyes; McCoy had cooed at her earlier, before the mission, almost predictably, fell apart. The Klingons had fled, but not before planting a bomb somewhere in the village (and, after the cocksure fashion of Klingons, foolishly informed Spock of this).

Spock’s tone is the one he uses on ensigns still unused to Starfleet protocol. “No.”

“Damn it, Spock, you can’t make me – ”

“I can, as your commanding officer.”

“Of all the times to play the rank card – ”

"In 12.47 minutes, the bomb will detonate. We do not know the length of the blast radius, but we cannot be certain it will be short," says Spock. To him, this conversation is over.

Then McCoy does something Spock has never seen him do.

He begs.

“Please, Spock,” he says, his teeth gritted (though, Spock thinks, not from resentment). “Please. Let me help them.”

This time, there is no delirium that renders Spock unable to control his body.

With a clean, precise movement, he reaches over and, before McCoy can understand what is happening, finds the nerve at the juncture of his neck and shoulder. Spock catches McCoy as he sways, too light for a grown human male. Spock files that information away for later examination, hauls McCoy onto his back, and runs.

They barely escape the fringes of the detonation; it all but flattens the little village and rises up in a dark shroud against the sky. Going back would be hazardous at best and suicidal at worst due to radiation.

Spock still cannot contact the _Enterprise_ , so at the edge of the woods some distance off he builds a makeshift shelter out of broad leaves and vines, as well as a fire. This turns out to be futile, because as the planet's sun dips low in the horizon it begins to rain. Not just a miserable, pattering drizzle, but a sharp, lashing thing that stings his skin. Spock crowds himself beneath the dipping shelter, his knees against his chest, and holds McCoy to his side to stop him from rolling right into the storm. There is nothing to do but wait for help.

When McCoy wakes, after the rain has thinned, he blinks against Spock’s shoulder and then wrenches away. He looks around, apparently gauging their situation, and then wraps his arms around his knees and scowls at the ground, sucking his lower lip. Spock turns away, realising that he has been staring.

McCoy says, hollow and bitter, "Why didn't you let me save them?"

_Because you are my friend_ , Spock thinks, exhausted. _Because you are my dear, dear friend, and I have grown selfish and jealous in the way of humans._ He says, "The loss of our CMO would mean a reduction in the efficiency of the _Enterprise_." It sounds tired, over-rehearsed.

"Don't do this to me, Spock," McCoy says quietly, deep lines appearing between his brows. "I don't deserve a lie. Not now. I want an answer from you, not from whatever logic that was hammered into your skull."

Spock is silent. He cannot voice his thoughts. They will emerge as small. Inadequate. McCoy will not understand, will only grow angry. "You intended to save that girl first," Spock says, edging away from the subject. _Save only that girl, because you would not have had the time to save anyone else_ , is what he had wanted to say, but McCoy would have taken to that badly. "She reminded you of your daughter."

McCoy closes his eyes. It is enough of a confirmation. At length McCoy releases a shuddering breath and curls up like a dormouse. Spock shuffles closer and, heedless of propriety, of his own apprehensions, folds his arms around him. It is warm for him – doubtlessly hot for McCoy – and sticky due to humidity.

Neither pulls away. Spock finds he is rocking McCoy the way he had rocked himself in his quarters. He does not know how long he does this for, but when he opens his eyes the morning light is painting the clouds and McCoy is still in his arms, slumbering, his fingers loosely clutching the front of Spock’s tunic.

(Later, McCoy will tell him it had been Joanna’s birthday.)

**x.**

Six months, nine days, and twelve hours before the end of their five-year mission, they stop at Vulcan for a diplomatic function.

Each day, after niceties and official meetings, they retire to the house of Sarek and Amanda. By now old and bitter disputes have been smoothed, and Spock and his shipmates are welcomed with open arms (from his mother) and the _ta’al_ (from his father). Jim and McCoy are provided guest rooms, though they only use them for sleeping, and prefer to harass (Spock's words, not theirs) him in his own quarters.

One evening, when there is a chill and Jim is required for a diplomatic gathering but the rest of them are not, Spock perches on a shallow stone stair at the front of his parents’ house and looks at the darkening violet sky. Two fires dance on either side of the staircase. Before he joined Starfleet, he would often sit at this location and identify the constellations, and wonder what the same stars had been named by other peoples. (He could memorise those courtesy the Vulcan databanks, but it would not supply the experience of personally visiting new planets.)

There is a shuffle, and McCoy wordlessly settles beside him, putting down a tray with two cups of steaming tea. He hands one to Spock, and Spock accepts it with a nod. They sip their tea and gaze at the far country, at the sharp shadows of sand dunes and the net of lights from the town ahead. Spock is filled with a strange peace, and he looks at his companion. McCoy’s smile is warmer than the firelight.

(Spock thinks their pattern is complete.)

_-finis-_

 


End file.
